So-called wrong-way drivers or ghost drivers occasionally occur in road transportation. Transportation users steer their vehicle in the wrong direction on the road and therefore meet vehicles moving in the correct direction in the lane. Such accidents usually occur on freeways, e.g., at freeway entrances that are used incorrectly, or one-way streets. A lack of knowledge of the local transportation routing, as well as confusing or poor sign-posting or distraction of the driver, are the most frequent causes of driving in the wrong direction.
The resulting hazardous situation often results in serious and very serious accidents. As a result, one of the tasks in transportation includes avoiding these situations or, when such a situation occurs, resolving the situation with as little damage as possible.
The signage, whether fixed or dynamic in the form of transportation guidance systems, is used for the former approach. Cameras, radar or infrared detection devices are also sometimes used for this purpose. The cameras detect the vehicles traveling in the wrong direction and output corresponding warnings.
However, these systems are not comprehensively available.
Mechanical obstacles are also installed. However, these obstacles are configured such that the obstacles resolve the hazardous situation with the acceptance of material damage.
For the latter approach, the transportation users traveling in the correct direction give a signal to the wrong-way driver, for example, by turning the vehicle headlights to full beam. Because these vehicles are already moving toward each other in this case, it is scarcely possible to resolve the situation safely and harmlessly depending on the speed.
DE 10 2008 036 131 A1 discloses a system in which a vehicle extrapolates an estimation of existing and future hazardous situations using the currently available vehicle information. The information is transmitted from the vehicle traveling in front, such as current position, direction and speed, and a comparison with available map material.
DE 10 2010 049 721 A1 discloses a system that determines trajectories from messages from vehicles and determines future collision probabilities/hazardous situations based on the trajectories.